Nightmarish Realm in “The Lazarus Effect”

From the producers of original hit horror franchise
as “The Purge,” “Insidious”and “Sinister” comes the horrifying reality in “The
Lazarus Effect” when a group of medical students play god to resurrect one of
their own.

Starring
Olivia Wilde, Mark Duplass, Donald Glover, Sarah Bolger and Evan Peters, “The
Lazarus Effect” is a gripping, thought-provoking thriller that begins with a
group of renegade medical researchers who believe they may have stumbled on a
breakthrough drug that could one day resurrect recently deceased patients. But when a lab accident takes the life of one
of their own, they decide to rush into a spontaneous experiment, bringing her
back to life in an extraordinary medical triumph . . . and unleashing forces
far beyond their comprehension.

Corporeal
reanimation has long been part of mythology, from zombies to Frankenstein, but
it has also been an enduring scientific quest.
Emergency medicine has come so far that, in some cases, people are being
resuscitated from flat-lined hearts even after many hours in a state
incompatible with life. So what if we
could extend that period to days or weeks … or beyond? In the film, the Lazarus Project Lab has
been probing that daring question for a while, with promising results, at least
with a dog named Rocky. They could be on the verge of the biotech coup of the
century. But even before they have
collected the necessary data to proceed, they are forced to dive into the
unthinkable: testing their serum not only on a human subject, but their beloved
friend. Now, they know they can bring a
human being back from clinical death.
But what they do not know is where they have brought her back from – and
how they are going to survive her wrath.

The
story builds on a mysterious medical reality that has resulted in more than 3
dozen documented cases of the so-called Lazarus Phenomenon – when a patient
spontaneously returns to life even after resuscitation has failed, named for
the Biblical figure who rose from the dead. The incidents have been shocking
and macabre. In 2010, a funeral worker
in Colombia discovered a 45 year-old woman’s body, long declared dead, starting
to move shortly before burial. In 2013,
an Ohio man coded for 45 minutes and doctors told his son he was gone; but when
the son came to say goodbye, a slight signal reappeared on the heart monitor
and the man suddenly revived. Then there is recent case of a dog euthanized
twice at an animal shelter in the Ozarks, only to be found sitting up in his
kennel the next morning. (The dog was
soon adopted … and named Lazarus.)

“I
loved the idea of really exploring the concept of being brought back to life,”
says director David Gelb. “What would
you experience while you were gone? How
would you be different when you came back? And what might you potentially bring
back with you? The young scientists in
our film set out to give patients and loved ones hope, but they discover that
there can be horrible consequences to playing with the power of life,” continues
Gelb. “As events begin to unfold, the
story takes a sharp turn into becoming an absolutely terrifying thrill ride
where you don’t know what’s going to happen, you don’t know who the next
character to disappear is going to be, and the scares are pretty intense.”